


Metacrisis No More

by Tammany



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Metacrisis Donna, letting go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 19:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: I don't know any of us who really like that Donna was left as she was. I don't know any of us who are entirely happy that the Doctor, in his hatred of endings, never went back to the Library to free River Song from memory and return her to a body--as he did for Donna and so many others. But River persisted--with spoilers still lingering in the last chronological version of her we have seen--in the Library, where new bodies are a computer command away. River, who is already in some way a Time Lord...So. This is a fix-it, and in the process it's an attempt to talk about how the Twelfth Doctor intuits not that he is dying--but that he's Letting The Doctor Go...and why that should be.Today? Everybody lives.





	Metacrisis No More

“They don’t die,” the voice whispered in her concealed soul.

“I know that,” she responded. The dialogue felt like it had gone on for centuries, all the while her pruned, bonsai self staggered along, bereft of memory, living as though her most vital experiences had never happened. “I know he doesn’t die. Regenerates. Space boy—he regenerates.”

“No,” the voice whispered, and she struggled to understand why she recognized that sarky baritone with just a hint of a Scottish accent. “No. They never die. It doesn’t work that way. He needs them to live. Just—in their own place. Fixed points in his life. Servers.”

Donna was tired of this dream. It came back, over and over, haunting her. Waking, she never recalled what she’d dreamed. Only that she argued with that voice, again and again and again, and her sleep was troubled.

“The Doctor’s no servant,” she snapped. “He’s not anybody’s servant, him.”

She could have sworn Voice-boy sighed at her: familiar, exasperated, a bit hyper, fond and frustrated. “No. You don’t understand. They don’t die. They don’t go. He needs all of them to hold it all.”

She rolled over, unaware she’d moved from her husband, and lay separate on the big mattress. Unaware of the coruscating light that played over her body, like lines of fire.

“I don’t…what you on about, eh? Who? Who doesn’t die?”

“You know who. Space-boy.”

“Don’t know any Space-boy,” she growled, though only moments before she’d known so completely it would not have occurred to her to question.”

“You are Space-boy.”

“Am not. I’m the Doctor Donna.”

She was the Doctor. The Doctor Donna. The memories struggled to come back.

“Meta-crisis,” she panted. In her proper world she was sweating, clinging to her pillow, tossing in her sleep. Her husband woke, dopey and confused, to find her burning up…fire dancing over her body. He tried to touch her, and snatched his hand away, swearing. No human could be that hot and live…and, yet…

“Donna? Honey? Wake up. Wake up, love…”

She shook her head, “Meta-crisis,” she said, this time aloud.

Her husband, frantic, slid off the bed and groped on the bedside table for the landline. “9-9-9” he said, terrified. “Yes. Yes. My wife. She’s sick. Or—on fire. Or…send someone. She’s burning up, and I don’t know what it is. Yes. Yes.” He gave their address, then sat on the bed, watching, and waiting for rescue.

“I can’t hold it all,” Donna told the voice in her head. “He said so. Human mind not meant to take all that.”

“Time Lord minds aren’t meant to take all that either,” the voice said. “Listen. You’ve got to listen. The memories want to come back, and they’ll destroy you and everything around you. These tiny little bodies. The incarnations. They’re not big enough to carry all that memory either. Put too much in and they can’t do it either. But they found a way. What do you do when a diary gets too full?”

“Oh,” she said, the revelation surging through her—understanding pulsing with the energy tearing her apart. “Oh.”

“That’s my clever girl,” the voice said, fond, praising her. Calling her. “Right. Get a new diary.”

“Regeneration?”

“Yes. That’s why they change form. We change form. You close the book, and start in a new one. Pick the cover to suit your need. Pick more.”

“But the old one. Dies…”

“No, sweetie. No—everybody lives. In their own place in…not time. The chronology of his life. A new layer of a shell. A new bead on a necklace. A new server in a network. They all live, in their own place in the progression. That’s how they can hold so many memories. Each one just holds his own.”

“Oh,” she says. “OH! Never die?”

“No. Each one…lets go. The next one picks up, but there’s a connection.”

“But the last one dies…”

“No. Do you die when you reach the end of your skin?”

“But—time’s not air.”

“It is for them.”

“But…”

“Don’t think about it, do it.”

Out in the real world she can hear sirens approach. The bed jounces, as her husband races away to open the door. But she’s there. She’s almost there.”

“Come on, girl. Understand.”

“But I don’t know how to let go of my body. I don’t have the memories.”

“Neither does he. They’re tied to the network. Pearls on the string. And you…”

“I’m tied to the string, forever,” she gasped. “Part of his regeneration.”

“Right. Good girl. See if you can find the connection.”

She’s burning up. The footsteps approaching race down the little hall of her pleasant, ordinary, boring little home, smaller on the inside than it is on the outside. Just like this life.

She reaches. There—there is the connection, and there are the memories, and she knows what it was when she was the Doctor—and he was the Doctor. And he was the Doctor. The network of lives, stretching back, each complete, each independently eternal each a single fixed point connected to other fixed points, each carrying one life’s memories but linked to all the others, knowledge never more than a whisper away.

“Oh. Oh!” She ties herself in, starting a new thread anchored in the old. Then she thinks, as the fires burn, “Doctor—I let you go.”

And her husband screams as she ignites into phoenix flame and wonder.

In her mind a voice says, “That’s right, clever girl. Come to me. We’ve got things to do. Adventures to experience. It works, once you remember how it’s done. Come along, sweetie. She’s waiting for us.”

Donna reaches out and grabs a slim hand and feels a tug…and comes through.

She is lying on the floor, she thinks. She looks up into a lean, vulpine face surrounded by wild silver and steel hair that would do Einstein proud. “Who—Doctor?”

“Close, but no cigar,” the man says. He grins a mischievous grin. “We can pick our forms, you know. When we change.”

“Oh,” she sits up. “Huh. I didn’t change.”

“Yes,” her new companion says. “Yes, you did. You just kept the same face. Up to you, I suppose. It’s a perfectly good face. Now—think hard, sweetie. Reach back. Find your last self. See if you can.”

Donna closes her eyes, and reaches…and reaches…and reaches. There—there she is. And before that, Her Doctor. And before that Rose’s Doctor. And before that an old, tired man. And before that a bold and courtly knight. And before that…

She counts them off. So many.

“More where that came from,” her companions says, when she tries to explain. “More than even we thought, though that is going to take awhile to work out. For now I’m just happy we both found our way back to regeneration. Can you find all the memories in the old you?”

She nods. Knowing what she’s learned, she can feel the infinitely trivial difference between memories in her head (very few, and those mixed up with odd new longings and needs), and those from her life before. Like reaching across a wire…whispering wireless to another network, that remains part of her.

“They don’t die,” she said, with blinding conviction. “No one dies. It’s like cell division, but with that link. They grow.”

The stranger who rescued her, who whispered in her ear, nods. “Exactly.”

“Who are you?” Donna asked, bewildered.

“Ah, me. Forgotten.” She gets a wry, merry grin from the stick-thin man who saved her. His eyes laugh. “Sweetie, do you remember a place called the Library?”

She studies her new companion.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh!” Then she frowns. “What’s his name? Tell me: prove it’s you. What’s his name.” She knows she will know it: her Immortal Line is rooted in his, tied to his, woven through with all his memories; memories neither human nor Time Lord minds were meant to hold at once.

The strange new marvel leans in, and his lips brush her ear, seductively. He says a word…

Doctor Donna meets his eyes. “You.”

He smiles. “Yes. That’s right, sweetie. Remember.”

“River? Dr. River Song?”

He shrugs. “These days I go by Tone Lake. Or—Doctor Lake. And you? Who will you be now?”

She considers, and smiles. “I’m Doctor Donna,” she says. “You—how did you come back?”

“The Library was dying. So I looked—and found in my memory, the memory of how to be reborn—and all the energy and all the technology I needed to rebirth my body and renew my memories.”

“Why that face?”

“Because—I’d miss him if I didn’t see him every day.” The man’s voice is sad…but Donna knew the woman she was, and understands.

“You love him,” she says.

Tone Lake shrugs. “He loves me,” he said, sounding like the knowledge filled his soul. “That—changes everything.” Then, stretching his lean, skinny skeletal body, he said, “Come along. There’s more than one way to trap a TARDIS than stealing one. Let’s get out of this place.

And Doctor Donna, without even bothering to ask what that place was, rose and followed, and her mind was filled with the comforting whisper of past lives, like pearls on a string…


End file.
